


Copy

by MulticoloredRose



Series: Do Not Go Gently [1]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Mass Effect 3: Citadel, Maya Brooks various aliases, Pre-Citadel DLC, Shepard Clone Centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-04 22:52:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16798633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MulticoloredRose/pseuds/MulticoloredRose
Summary: It takes six months to get him ready to challenge the Original.





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**Author's Note:**

> Possible Warnings: There is a subtle reference to dub-con possibly non-con depending on how you look at it. It's nothing graphic at all, just a brief reference to it but I wanted to heads up anyone who might not want to be blindsided by that. (It's also the reason for the rating, just to be safe)
> 
> Other notes, I love the Citadel DLC but I feel like so much more could have been done with it. It's such a fun DLC and such an entertaining concept. So I'm messing around with it a little, expanding on it and shifting some things up. Also, Maya Brooks codename is Rasa according to Mass Effect Wiki. So she goes by that name in this story, but that's Maya. Enjoy.
> 
> This is a slightly oc Shepard - Aidan Shepard

There isn’t much that he remembers from the time immediately surrounding his ‘awakening’. He can remember bright lights and barked commands under a sea of unfamiliar faces that tugged and poked at him with more needles and force than was probably necessary.

He remembers the _fear_ , even though he’ll never admit that out loud to anyone.

He also remembers seeing Rasa for the first time, being one of the first faces that he was able to truly focus on, looking down at him with a satisfied smirk.

_“Hello Shepard”_

Those had been the first words spoken directly to him that he could remember. No context to go with them, no explanations as to who ‘Shepard’ was or who he was supposed to be. Rasa had been the one to utter them, her voice purring over the greeting like it meant so much more than what he could possibly understand at that moment in time. And he’s remiss to admit that she would have been right. He couldn’t have understood the weight of the name ‘Shepard’, he couldn’t have understood the history and the strife and the glory that came with the name yet.

He spends his first few days stuck in bed, with doctors fussing and tutting over him as they pump him full of drugs without ever once pausing and asking him if he wanted whatever new substance that burned going through him. They never once spoke to him, opting to talk to each other as the neural implants settled in his brain.

The implants teach him language and awareness as he lies there on the medical bed like an experiment. It’s the first experience he has with frustration, the way the doctors act like he isn’t there. Like he’s not real enough for them to take one extra second to just look at him and _see_ him. Even just once.

He starts to take in other pieces of information at that time as the implants teach him the basic understanding of the world that he should have at this age. Mathematics, history, culture and various other school topics that children go to school for years to learn. He has it downloaded in less than three weeks.

And it burns. It’s like fire in his brain and no one stops or seems to care.

It’s around the time that he starts noticing little things though. He starts to notice how the doctors, nameless faces with cold eyes, start to disappear and are replaced by new models with the same careless touch. He catches onto the fact that the doctors that Rasa keeps bringing in never last longer than a few weeks, the longest lasting sixteen days before Rasa puts a bullet in his skull with a smartass comment on her lips about how he could consider himself ‘fired’.

It’s the first time he sees death, he has knowledge of it that’s been plugged into his brain but no awareness or understanding of it.

He doesn’t gain understanding then either. Just a feeling of knowing that he wouldn’t be seeing that doctor again.

_“I need him ready Doc.” Rasa says off in the background at a meek little rat in a lab coat._

_“I understand that, but you must understand. These neural stimulators can be dangerous in the dosages that you’re trying to push. You could liquidate his brain long before the implants could start injecting the information that you want into his mind. We need to take this slowly, carefully. Unless you have a backup Commander Shepard just sitting in cold storage somewhere that we can use when this one fails.”_

_“I want this part finished with Doctor. We need to move on, we’re behind schedule.” Rasa says firmly. “Do you know there are very few things I hate more than being behind schedule?”_

_“I’m sorry Ma’am. I can only do what he can survive.”_

_“Just hurry it up. We need him up and ready as soon as possible. Not sitting in a bed like a fucking vegetable.” She snaps. “Get it done.”_

Everything gets worse after that. After that, comes the downloads and the tests and the repetition of being grilled on the new information that they’re presenting to him. Questions of ‘where were you born’, ‘who was your superior officer’, ‘what was your first solo mission’, ‘what happened on Elysium’. The knowledge comes from the downloads in a strange, detached sort of way and he wonders if he’s a military vet. If he was hurt in some mission, and if he’s lost his memory and they’re trying to get ‘Commander Aidan Shepard’ back on his feet and ready for duty.

It’s around that time though, that one of the doctors slips up when Rasa is not around to oversee them.

_“When did Commander Shepard gain the Star of Terra and what did he gain it for?” It’s the easiest of slips, but it burns itself into his mind as badly as the neuro stims have been doing. ‘He’, not ‘You’._

He doesn’t see that doctor again, and it’s the first time he has a ‘heart to heart’ with Rasa when he asks her who he is. Because he knows he’s not Commander Shepard. It’s sad, there was once when that was the only truth that he knew for certain, and now it’s been taken from him.

Rasa sits down and tells him the truth.

He’s not Commander Aidan Shepard.

He’s not even human. He’s a _clone_.

A clone created by Cerberus to be _spare parts_ , and who was kept in storage because they hadn’t needed him.

It was never Cerberus’s intention to have him be Shepard. It was never their intention for him to be a potential replacement for the man either. No, he was created in a lab to be nothing more than _parts_. He was _nothing_. He came from _nothing_ , and _nothing_ was going to change that. Nothing was going to change the fact that he only came into existence to be spare fucking parts for the galaxies darling little hero.

That’s around the time he thinks he learns what rage is. Not the download of it, but true understanding of the way it can steal your breath from your lungs and make every muscle in your body hurt with it. A feeling that festers a fire so deep within someone that it eats at you every single time you so much as _breathe_.

Sometimes, he wishes that he’d never learned the truth.

Rasa had fed the rage in him of course, and he’s not really surprised. She has a motive for this, an end goal that she hasn’t shared with him but he sees the way she looks at him satisfied like he’s done something _right_ when he stews inside of his own rage. He figures it out quickly that she needs a weapon, a force of nature that she can depend on. One that she can control and one that would follow her and her ideas to the ends of the galaxy and back again. For this, she’d chosen him.

It’s the only thing that he’s been chosen for. Something that ‘Aidan Shepard’ doesn’t have over him.

Rasa gives him access to the extranet after that, for him to peruse in his very small amounts of downtime. He learns that Commander Shepard has been discharged from the Alliance and placed under house arrest back on Earth and it makes his lip curl up in a sneer. Everything their little hero did for them and he allows for them to disgrace him like this?

He makes his first mistake during that time. Asking Rasa why they don’t reach out and tell Shepard about him. It’s the only question he has ever asked her, and it proves to be the last one he ever will when she explains with a pitying look on her face. She tells him how the world views ‘things’ like him and how Commander Shepard will undoubtedly feel about him as well. He’s an abomination made flesh, an insult that should have never been given the chance to take his first breath in the world…a _mistake_. A mistake that she assures him Commander Shepard will gladly rectify.

After all, the universe already has a Aidan Shepard. Why does it need two? It doesn’t, and there isn’t enough room for the both of them. And as it stands right now, of the two of them? That Aidan Shepard is more Aidan Shepard than he is, and unless he gets his act together – he’ll be the one that gets wiped away when the time comes.

Rasa teaches him hate around that time. To hate the man who hates him. To hate the situation that he’s found himself in even though he never asked for any of this. To a point, she teaches him to hate her as well for how much he must rely on her, but he doesn’t think that was part of her ‘Plan’. She teaches him to hate the first time that she comes into his room at night with her pushing and her pulling and how she climbs over him and holds him down with that smirk on her face.

He hates that he doesn’t know if she’s here because of him and something he’s done right, or if she’s here because of the face he wears. Sometimes, he wonders if all of this is some kind of power trip that she enjoys getting off on, but he never asks. He just pushes back and rides it out.

He figures that it’s only natural that he starts to fantasize about what it would be like to be the one who got to be in the daylight. To be the Aidan Shepard who got to decide for himself the direction and path his life would take. To be the one who got to walk down the street with his head held high. To be the one who could look in the mirror and not see someone else’s face reflected back in it because it would just be his. He’d be Commander Shepard, there’d be no others.

It’s only so long before the envy slips in next to the hate and the rage like an old friend. He doesn’t fully remember when it happens, no sudden ‘aha!’ moment that he can point to, but the signs of its existence are clear once it’s there.

He remembers three months in how Rasa started bringing in the mercenaries to ‘train’ with him. He remembers imagining Commander Shepard’s face – the _other_ Shepard’s face – on each and every single one of them during that time. In the beginning, he remembers how they laugh and jeer at him while they beat the shit out of him. He doesn’t miss how all of their insults and slurs are referencing a man that he isn’t and he hates them for it. Even here, in these moments of weakness he can’t get away from Shepard, because both sides were seeing and reacting to the man even if he wasn’t there. A phantom haunting every waking moment of his life.

Rasa never calls them off, even as he’s spitting up blood and waking up later in the infirmary coated in medi-gel. ‘Tough love’ is how Rasa explains it away one of the nights she comes to him and he feels like he understands. The universe won’t treat him with kid gloves just because he’s new. It’ll take and it’ll beat him down and it will laugh in his face until he figures out how to stay on his feet and fight back.

Rasa has a smirk on her lips when he finally snaps and manages to take his first life.

There’s a heady sort of feeling that rushes through him at that. The combination of her pride and of his own power. He’s no longer a helpless victim trapped in here with them – they’re trapped in here with him and he’s a _predator_. He makes his way through dozens and dozens of them in the following weeks and the feeling of strength and power is something that he holds proudly inside of him. He makes himself a promise. No one will ever lord over him again, no one will ever have the power to hurt him again. No one will win a fight against him and jeer at him for not being Commander Shepard. He solidifies that promise over and over again as he kills mercenary after mercenary until the sounds of their dying breaths mingle into a kind of white noise. Something inconsequential and unimportant, nothing worth losing sleep over.

They’re worth less than him now.

 _“You are the first human Spectre, Commander. This is a great accomplishment for you and your entire species.”_ The asari councilor praises the other him as she hands off a title that means so much and yet so little. It’s not a real posting, it’s just something handed to him to make the human ambassador back off on his single-minded determination to call out the council on all their anti-human bullshit. The other councilors talk of how it’s such an honor for his species and the other him looks like he did in the videos when the Admirals pinned the Star of Terra on his chest.

He’s flanked by two Alliance soldiers in the video, standing off in the background and he pulls them up real quick. Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams of the Normandy, killed in action on Virmire and Major Kaidan Alenko.

He pulls up the information on Virmire. It’s a mission that the Normandy undertook when it was tasked with brining in Saren. According to the reports, the STG team stationed there radioed for help when they found a krogan breeding facility. The plan had been simple, go in and plant a bomb. Get the hell out of Dodge and detonate it.

Unfortunately, the mission goes sideways at the arrival of Saren and the Reaper known as Sovereign. Commander Shepard had been unable to pull out all of his teams before having to depart the planet and Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams died alongside several salarian STG members that day. He wonders how the original feels about the mission, if he feels a lingering guilt at his decision. Would he go back and change it if he could?

He pulls out the files on the then Lieutenant Alenko and sits it next to Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams file. He wonders if he’d have chosen Alenko? He runs the scenario in the quiet of his room and pretends that it’s him standing there, being told to make a choice. He playacts that he’s the one who holds these two lives in his hands. The answer strikes him as obvious. In a matchup between the two, Alenko seems like the rational choice. He’s a powerful biotic with a higher rank and a dozen more skills to boast of than the Gunnery Chief. It makes perfect sense to preserve him in order to maintain the strongest team possible for later missions.

He goes to bed wondering if that’s the rationality that went through the other Shepard’s mind back when he was forced to make the choice.

He gets many more opportunities to second guess and doubt the other him’s decisions during his down time. Rasa approves of him studying the ‘Original’ as they’ve taken to calling him – he thinks they do it just because they can hear how his teeth grind when they do – methods and choices. It’s the first step in becoming more Shepard than the current Shepard.

He studies the cases after Virmire. He studies the moment when Shepard made the choice to sacrifice so many human lives to save a council that had never done anything for them. He studies the missions after the Citadel attack when they sent him off to fight geth in order to keep the whispers of the Reapers quiet.

It’s one of those missions that are the end of Shepard’s first life and the start of his. The Collector ship that attacks and destroys the Normandy manages to kill Shepard for the two years that it takes for Miranda Lawson, an ex-Cerberus agent, to bring Shepard back and to create him. It’s the beginning of the fall of Cerberus, Rasa says. It’s when the Illusive Man turned his back on everything they stood for and went begging to _aliens_ for help with human colonies.

He reads the dossiers that Rasa created on Shepard’s team during that time. The asari Justicar, the drell assassin, the turian vigilante, the disgraced quarian and the tank bred krogan.

The last one bothers him for reasons unknown. Shepard seems to take in this ‘Grunt’ with little to no problems despite the krogan being a clone like him. Rasa seems to notice this though and reminds him that Grunt was an amalgamation of dozens of krogan and not one perfect copy. Also, he wasn’t Shepard himself and he was useful. Just a pawn that Shepard could throw into battle and not care if it got broken or killed.

“Major Alenko was on Horizon?” He clarifies and Rasa nods.

“The Alliance sent him in to investigate the Shepard sightings and the Collector attacks. He was trying to get a defense grid up before the Collector attack.”

“He didn’t manage.”

“No, the Collectors showed up much sooner than anyone was expecting. Well, anyone but the Illusive Man.” She says and he glances at her. “He guessed that the Collectors were looking for any connections to Commander Shepard at that time, anything to hold over him. They tracked down Alenko for it.”

“And he didn’t join with them?”

“No, he wouldn’t work for Cerberus regardless of the mission. Shepard offered, he declined quite firmly Lawson’s report said.”

It’s the first sign of a person who didn’t get sucked into this ‘Cult of Shepard’ that Rasa talks about. Surely Major Alenko would feel indebted to Commander Shepard for choosing his life over Williams back on Virmire, but apparently, he hadn’t budged on his stance. There are records though, that Rasa is able to grant him access to which shows that Major Alenko hasn’t fully cut ties from Shepard. He seems to be the only one of Shepard’s original and secondary crew to speak out at all in Shepard’s favor during the trials and investigations. Using up whatever goodwill he’d gathered alongside Admiral Anderson to help minimize the damage to Shepard’s career and life even though records never put him actually interacting again with the man himself.

It almost makes him want to laugh. All those fair-weather alien friends of his are nowhere to be seen now that he needs them, but the two humans’ have remained by his side even as he pushed them away. It feels like karma.

He looks up Alenko the next time he gets the chance, deciding to ignore the ‘Original’ and look into his loyal friend. The Major’s service record is surprisingly classified and hard to get ahold of, but he’s able to track down stints he’s done with teaching a biotic team and various other missions. He’s a talented soldier and a brilliant mind all wrapped up in a powerful biotic package. Shepard made a good choice choosing him all that time ago.

He watches a vid-documentary that has a clip of Alenko in it where he’s asked about the attack on the Citadel and what it was like to be at ground zero with the great Commander Shepard. Said Commander is sitting next to him and gives an amused grin to the other man.

 _“Yeah Alenko, how was that?”_ He jokes and Alenko’s returned smile is fond and just as entertained.

 _“Well I don’t know, there were a lot of geth attacking and lots of yelling. Oh, and no gravity, that was fun. There was that one time that Commander Shepard fell on his-”_ Alenko starts to say and Shepard’s quick to cut him off.

_“Slander. Complete and utter slander. Don’t listen to him. Nothing of the sort happened.”_

_“Of course sir, my mistake. It must have been the other Commander Shepard.”_

The vid is time stamped one week before the fated Collector attack. It’s a piece that’s been viewed more times than can probably truly be counted and he finds himself strangely fascinated by the back and forth comradery between the group sitting in the room being interviewed. The turian seems to have no qualms pointing out embarrassing moments while the krogan seems perfectly content with pointing out at the end of every battle story how he came in and saved all of their asses again and again. The shuttle pilot Moreau talks about the final fight and dropping the Mako right on top of Saren and his forces on Ilos in a crazy stunt that most would have thought impossible to achieve.

They’re a group that the vid goes out of its way to make seem larger than life and yet completely human at the same time. It’s trying to show the strange sort of family that was created in a group consisting of so many of the Citadel species. The asari seems as awkward as the quarian anytime the camera tries to engage with them and the ‘team’ always seems to come to their aid to tell some amazing part of the ‘story’ that they were apart of and how the whole mission wouldn’t have survived had it not been for them.

…and for Wrex, who came in at the end and saved all their asses.

He watches the vid more times than is probably healthy, trying to get a feel for that kind of comradery between others. He sees the kindness in Alenko’s eyes and how they crinkle when he smiles and it makes him pause every time. He’s had so little use for kindness and the smiles he’s used to seeing tend to run the way of Rasa’s smirks whenever he’s done something she approves of. He pulls up the one-year anniversary vid of ‘Commander Shepard’s Death’ and he watches Alenko speak so highly of both a commanding officer and a friend who fell that day.

There’s a sad smile on Alenko’s face as he talks about Aidan Shepard and he wonders if anyone will ever speak for him the way the brunet is for the Original. He wonders if he becomes more Shepard if someone like Alenko, or maybe even Alenko himself will turn to him with that kind smile and that laughter in his eyes as they banter back and forth.

The Reapers end up attacking much sooner than any of them anticipated, appearing on Earth and terrorizing humanity in an obvious grudge against the human who held back their attack twice before. Rasa’s sources inform him that Commander Shepard is aboard the Normandy, having been reinstated – of course he has – and has fled from the battle to run to the Citadel to beg on his hands and knees for _aliens_ to help them out.

Why Shepard is still under the delusion that it will work is beyond him.

“Cerberus channels report that the Illusive Man is sending his forces to Mars to retrieve the Prothean data stored there.” Rasa says, pushing her hair over her shoulder. “Apparently he believes that there’s something within the beacon that’s going to help mankind win the war against the Reapers.” He takes the information from her and looks over it.

“The Normandy will arrive shortly after the coup if the pilot pushes it.” He says and she nods.

“Undoubtedly. Looks like the Original and the Illusive Man are about to butt heads again.” She says it with a kind of dark glee in her tone and he figures that it stems back to her and her need to destroy the Illusive Man for his unforgivable betrayal to the human race. He also thinks she’s angry at the Illusive Man because right now she’s like him in the thought that she has to hide her face as well because if the man knew where she was, he’d undoubtedly send agents to kill her like he would Lawson. “It’s almost time.” She tells him, reaching up and putting her arm on his shoulder. “Very soon it will be the perfect time for the switch. He’s no longer being watched like a hawk by the Alliance. Soon, very soon, it’ll be your turn.”

It sounds like a promise. Like the promise that he was born to fulfil and he likes it. He can’t wait for it to come to pass. He figures that once he becomes the first human Spectre and overtakes Shepard’s life that he’ll help her kill the Illusive Man as a gift to her for all she’s done to help him. He figures he’ll hand over Cerberus to her just like Shepard handed over the Shadow Broker’s role to his pet asari. That would be the best outcome, putting Cerberus back in the hands of someone who actually believes in humanity first and who hasn’t stumbled in that regard.

He figures that’ll make them even.

He gets the information later that Shepard made it to Mars in time to challenge Cerberus for the Prothean data that everyone seems so obsessed with, and that he picked up Dr. Liara T’Soni from the base as well. It talks of the Catalyst that the Alliance is starting to prep themselves to undertake and it discusses small other tidbits of information gleaned from the archives that might aid them at a later time.

It’s a boring read until the last few lines of the report which catch his attention and he almost crushes the datapad in his hand when he does.

Major Kaidan Alenko was critically injured on Mars and he’s been rushed to the Citadel for emergency medical attention.

A strange calm rushes in after the rage. Cold instead of hot like all the other times. How could the would-be-hero let one of his own, let the man who had his back when no one else did and who had been with him since the beginning be harmed on a mission to gather _alien_ data and where his pet _alien_ walked away without a scratch.

How could he let that happen? The asari have always looked down on humans, just like the salarians and the turians and the vorcha and every other fucking race in the damned galaxy, and once again even with the information that Shepard brings them, they still make the choice to not come to Earth’s aid. Despite Shepard being a part of this ‘glorious Spectre group’ how is it that he still hasn’t seen that these _things_ aren’t their allies? How could he allow Alenko to be harmed in the place of the asari, and how can Shepard justify rushing off to the aid of Palaven instead of Earth?

He’s not a hundred percent certain why he’s so angry about the incident. According to the reports, if they can be trusted having been co-filed with an alien, Cerberus is at fault for the Major’s injuries. The synthetic body that infiltrated the base alongside the supposed ‘Shadow Broker’ – and he’s determined that the asari is the _worst_ fucking Shadow Broker to ever come into existence – had been given a direct order to kill the Major by the Illusive Man himself.

He figures it’s just one more weight on the scales of why the Illusive Man needs to die.

Rasa seems to realize that something has changed when he walks into the training grounds the next day and she’s pleased with it. He’s fully dedicated to the plan now. Commander Shepard doesn’t _deserve_ his life or his ship or his friends. Not with how he leaves them when they’re hurt to go play hero with the trash. He knows deep inside of himself that he’ll take everything from Shepard. He won’t leave a scrap for the Original to hold onto when he’s done with him and then he’ll lock him away to be forgotten. Just like he was once upon a time.

He doesn’t say how he secretly wants to head to the Citadel to visit Huerta Memorial and check in on Alenko. Rasa wouldn’t like that, wouldn’t appreciate it at all and would probably accuse him of losing sight of the real goal.

He knows that’s not true. It’s just that his ‘real goal’ and her ‘real goal’ looks slightly different. She wants the Illusive Man gone and to have a Spectre with all their power and authority in her grip. Her goal is to reign down hell on every alien race and her goal is domination over all those who ever gave her an issue or looked at her wrong once upon a time. That’s her goal, the one she hides behind telling him what his goal is.

He knows though that their goals shift slightly at the end.

He’ll be a Spectre, he’ll have earned it after all. He’ll then earn the fear and respect of the alien species and he’ll govern and judge as he sees fit. He’ll captain the Normandy in the fight against the Reapers and he’ll save mankind. He’ll be a better Aidan Shepard than the one who has the mantle right now. He’ll also work hand in hand with Rasa when she controls Cerberus in order to remind every other species that humans are to be feared and that they don’t need their approval. He’ll help mankind dominate and when they write stories about Commander Shepard in the future it’ll be the stories of _his_ actions that they tell.

That’s his goal.

And it’s one that’s quickly coming due.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a kudo and a comment!


End file.
